On the highlands of Mars early in the history of the planet precipitation-driven fluvial erosion competed with ongoing impact cratering. This disruption, and the multiple enclosed basins produced by impacts, is partially responsible for a long debate concerning the processes and effectiveness of fluvial erosion. The role of fluvial erosion in sculpting the early Martian landscape is explored he...

Soil erosion is driven by not only aeolian but also fluvial transport processes, yet these two types of processes are usually studied independently, thereby precluding effective assessment of overall erosion, potential interactions between the two drivers, and their relative sensitivities to projected changes in climate and land use. Here we provide a perspective that aeolian and fluvial transp...

A surface processes model incorporating large-scale fluvial processes, local hill-slope processes, and glacial erosion is used to investigate the effect of glaciation on the relief of a fast-growing, narrow orogen. The results of several simulations show that: glaciers concentrate erosion near peaks; fluvial erosion is reduced downstream of glaciers; glaciers with frozen bases can lead to an in...

[1] Mechanistic theories of fluvial erosion are essential for quantifying large-scale orogenic denudation. We examine the topographic implications of two leading classes of river erosion model, detachment-limited and transport-limited, in order to identify diagnostic and testable differences between them. Several formulations predict distinctly different longitudinal profile shapes, which are s...

[1] Drainage networks on Titan, Earth, and Mars provide the only known examples of non-volcanic fluvial activity in our solar system. The drainage networks on Titan are apparently the result of a methane-ethane cycle similar to Earth’s water cycle. The scarcity of impact craters and the uneven distribution of fluvial dissection on Titan suggest that the surface may be relatively young. The purp...

[1] We present evidence that a final epoch of widespread fluvial erosion and deposition in the cratered highlands during the latest Noachian or early to mid-Hesperian was characterized by integration of flow within drainage networks as long as 4000 km and trunk valley incision of 50 to 350 m into earlier Noachian depositional basins. Locally deltaic sediments were deposited where incised valley...

Coupling between erosion and tectonics are thought to play a determinant role in mountains evolution. Here, we investigate the interplay in this coupling between the assumed erosion law and the crustal rhe-ology at the margin of a collisional plateau, like the Himalaya of central Nepal. Lithospheric deformation is calculated over a time scale of 100 kyr by a two-dimensional finite elements mode...

[1] Observations of likely fluvial channels on the surface of Titan, along with Titan’s geologically youthful surface, motivate this study of comparative fluvial erosion rates on Titan and the Earth. The roles of bedload abrasion, suspended load abrasion, plucking, and cavitation are considered. Despite orders of magnitude differences in some of the physical parameters that control fluvial inci...

Streambank erosion is known to be a major source of sediment in streams and rivers. The Bank Stability and Toe Erosion Model (BSTEM) was developed in order to predict streambank retreat due to both fluvial erosion and geotechnical failure. However, few, if any, model evaluations using long-term streambank retreat data have been performed. The objectives of this research were to (1) monitor long...

At Aberdaron, north Wales, a complex sequence of homogeneous tills and fluvial sediments overlie a hard rock base. The lower diamicton association at the bottom of the sequence consists of deformed tills and lenses of stratified sediments. It is suggested that these represent deforming bed tills and subglacial fluvial units which have been deformed together by subglacial excavational deformatio...